Strike A Pose: Doc Follows Dancers from Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour After the Lights Dimmed

By Kim Hughes

Rating: B-

Re-released to coincide with the 30th anniversary of Madonna: Truth or Dare which chronicled the pop singer’s 1990 Blond Ambition tour, Strike a Pose, from 2016, captures a moment in time though perhaps not quite as extraordinarily as the before-mentioned documentary which has become a kind of benchmark for depicting backstage celebrity.

The film begins as a straight-up retelling of how a group of seven young, gorgeous, and talented male dancers — Luis Camacho, Oliver Crumes, Salim Gauwloos, Jose Gutierez, Kevin Stea, Gabriel Trupin, and Carlton Wilborn — ended up on the 57-date, globe-hopping tour alongside Madonna who, at that moment, was the biggest female star on the planet.

Footage from the eye-popping, ground-breaking tour speaks for itself: the dazzling Jean Paul Gauthier costumes, elaborate choreography, and production and, of course, Madonna and her dancers tackling topics of sex, religion, sex, iconography, sex, independence, sex, freedom and sex in dramatic and highly theatrical on-stage vignettes.

There are of course some great anecdotal stories, such as how Madonna came to New York ahead of the tour to meet Camacho and Gutierez, who had essentially developed the concept of “vogue-ing” in the gay underground scene and were chosen based on that aesthetic and ability, as well as recollections from the madcap open audition for the tour held that January in New York.

Like ever other aspect of the tour, the dancers were hand-picked and vetted by Madonna personally, offering each a rarefied status that could be traded like hard currency, both to their benefit and detriment as the years went on.

But Strike a Pose aims not so much to rehash the tour (though it does) as to follow the dancers after the tour during real life as they navigated subsequent jobs and relationships while the AIDS crisis raged, all the while striving to be seen as people rather than gay people even as they embraced their identity. (One dancer was actually straight).

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Indeed, as Guy Lodge writing in The Guardian about Truth or Dare recently put it, "Keshishian’s film is perhaps still undervalued as a queer cinema milestone, normalising as it does the out-and-proud gayness of most of [Madonna’s] dancers, without fetishising or exoticising their sexuality – relative, at least, to the blazing sexual energy of their glittery leader.

“Truth or Dare was rare at the time in its everyday depiction of queer performers at work and at play, hanging out, gossiping or mingling around a New York Pride parade: Madonna is the freak of nature in their midst, not the other way round.”

And so Strike a Pose goes, though as might be expected, the film explores sadness, rejection, and death with as much perseverance as music, dancing, and celebrity. Perhaps paradoxically, this group of men — who for one year came closer to fame than most ever will — experienced commensurate lowlights including but not limited to drugs, homelessness, breakups and, in the case of dancer Gabriel Trupin, death. (His mother appears here to help tell his story).

For these men, the Blond Ambition tour was both a curse and a blessing. For viewers of this doc, Strike A Pose, though perhaps overly long and repetitive, is a touching reminder that we all occupy the same world and are vulnerable to its pitfalls… even those lucky (or unlucky) enough to have briefly dwelled in the shadow of the almighty Madonna.

Strike a Pose. Directed by Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan. With Luis Camacho, Oliver Crumes, Salim Gauwloos, Jose Gutierez, Kevin Stea and Carlton Wilborn. Available via virtual cinema on May 21.